The Mac had a great year in 2013, with powerful new Macs on both the portable and desktop side, and the release of OS X Mavericks, which has been easily one of the best major updates to the Mac operating system in years. Here are thirteen of our favorite tip and tricks articles focusing on … Read More
Do you want to control which apps can use your location on Mac? Want to see exactly what apps are using your location data on the Mac? Mac OS X now has the ability to easily view and manage which applications can access a users location data. This article will review first how to determine … Read More
Just about every Mac comes with a front-facing camera these days, referred to usually as the FaceTime camera, and on older machines was called iSight. Nearly all of the time, this camera works flawlessly and you’ll never have any problems with it, but a frustrating error can appear from time to time that makes many … Read More
Looking for the best old school gaming emulator for Mac OS X? Look no further, OpenEmu is an awesome emulator for nearly all of the classic retro gaming console, with full support for Game Boy Advance, Game Boy Color, NeoGeo, NES, Nintendo DS, Sega 32x, Sega Game Gear, Sega Genesis, Super Nintendo (SNES), TurboGrafx 16, … Read More
Visiting relatives, or going home for the holidays or a special occasion? Give the gift of free tech support! There’s a good chance that if you’re a regular reader here, you’re also the regular family tech support guy/gal too. Now that you’re visiting the family for the holidays, take some time to get onto their … Read More
You can send digital books as gifts directly from the iTunes app and it’s included iBook Store on any desktop Mac or PC. Having long been able to send apps and movies, music, and movies as gifts, giving books is a recent addition. Just like the other gifting options, you can even order a book … Read More
Safari now provides finely tuned controls over what websites can use which browser plugins, and there are few better uses for such a feature than selectively limiting the Adobe Flash Player plugin to only be enabled for specifically approved websites. Basically this means you can have the Flash player installed on your Mac, but blocked … Read More
iCloud Keychain is a password management feature that arrived to the Mac with Mac OS X Mavericks, and to the mobile Apple world with iOS 7 and remains available in all modern system software releases. Basically it stores encrypted passwords securely within iCloud, which can then be accessed securely through your Mac or iOS device, … Read More
Apple has released the version major system update to OS X Mavericks, versioned as OS X 10.9.1. The update appears focused on several prominent complaints focused around Mail app in Mavericks, resolving several issues with Gmail support, improved search functionality, a fix for group contacts, and improvements to Smart Mailboxes. OS X 10.9.1 also resolves … Read More
Using a handy network feature built into OS X and supported by most modern Macs, you can remotely wake a Mac from sleep using an iPhone (or iPod touch, iPad, and Android too). This is done using something called Wake On LAN (WOL), and it’s easy to set up in Mac OS X and use … Read More
The PDF file format is ubiquitous for good reason, mostly because it allows for perfect preservation of a documents formatting, text, and other elements, but also because it allows for encrypted password protection of documents. But let’s face it, sometimes PDF files can be bloated, and something that should be 200k or less can be … Read More
Just about every semi-technical person has setup a wireless router at home or in the office, and in that process has wondered which broadcast channel would be the best to use. Sure, some wi-fi routers make it simple and will recommend a channel on their own, but often it’s left up to the user to … Read More
If you’re like me, you carry the full length MacBook Air / Pro MagSafe adapter cord with your portable Mac. And if you do, you’re familiar with how cumbersome having that large extender cable attached to the MagSafe is, either taking up tons of space as it unwinds, or just being a huge tangled mess. … Read More
iTunes Radio is an excellent free streaming music service that arrived to the iOS Music app with the 7.0 update. For those unfamiliar with Radio, you can create a station from any artist or genre, and enjoy an endless stream of great songs, both new and familiar. If you’re a music fan, it’s easily one … Read More
Do you have your terminal windows arranged in a particular way, perhaps running particular processes, that you want to consistently resume to without having to rearrange and relaunch things? Rather than relying entirely on the OS X Resume feature, you should use the Terminal app “Window Groups” tool, which lets you save not only the … Read More
Tis the season for some winter fun and holiday magic… in your Mac OS X Terminal with some digital snow fall! This nifty not-so-little ruby command string will make it snow in the command line of your Mac, there isn’t much to get it snowing beyond a simple copy and paste, but for best results … Read More
Want to have the Mac Dock in the corner of the screen? The Mac OS X Dock sits centered along the bottom of the screen on every Mac by default, and most users probably assume that moving the Dock to a new location is limited to centering on either the left or right side of … Read More
The infinitely useful instant preview tool of Quick Look has been a feature of Mac OS X for quite some time now, and users have long been able to use either a key modifier or multitouch gesture to zoom in and out of the Quick Look preview windows of an image or PDF file. Now … Read More
